Figs

November 30, 2015 Tangie Holifield

A whole roasted duck doesn’t have to be fussy. With just a few hours’ roasting and hardly any work at all, you can have a juicy bird with crisp skin—the best of both textures.

Serves 2 to 4

Ingredients:
For the Duck:
1 quart fresh-squeezed orange juice
1 cup Choripdong Honey Citron Tea Marmalade*, plus more for basting
½ cup honey
One 5 to 6 pound duck, giblets and excess fat removed and discarded, wing tips turned under
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

For the Figs:
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 pound purple figs (about 16 figs)
3 Tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1 Tablespoon honey
4 teaspoons Lemon Juice
A pinch of salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Directions:
For the Duck:
Combine orange juice, Honey Citron Tea marmalade, and honey in a bowl deep enough to hold duck. Add duck, over, and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight, turning duck once or twice if marinade doesn’t cover it.

Preheat oven to 375 °F.

Remove duck from marinade, reserving marinade. Prick duck skin all over with a fork (do not pierce the flesh), and season inside and out with salt and pepper. Place breast side up on a rack in a roasting pan and transfer to oven. After 10 minutes, turn heat down to 350°F and roast for 1 ½ to 2 hours.

When duck has roasted, remove pan from oven and turn heat down to 325°F. Discard all but a little fat from roasting pan. Baste the duck with the marmalade. Return to oven and cook until the duck is browned, for bout 10 minutes. Remove the duck from oven and place on a serving platter. Let stand for 10 minutes while preparing the figs and sauce.

For the Figs:
Heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the butter.

Add the figs and cook, turning, until golden, about 3 minutes.

Reduce the heat and add the sugar, balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar and honey; stir to coat and cook for an additional 6 to 8 minutes or until syrup is thickened. Spoon syrup over figs and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Remove from the figs from the heat and set aside.

Transfer the figs to a serving platter with the duck and drizzle with the reserved fig syrup before serving.

To serve for 2: Cut duck in half using sharp scissors or poultry shears. Remove backbone by cutting along one side and then the other, then cut along breastbone.

To Serve for 4: Cut each half into breast and leg sections.
Place each duck portion on a warm plate.

*Cook’s Note:
You can substitute the Honey Citron Tea for one 12-ounce jar of bitter or sweet orange marmalade.

September 21, 2014 Tangie Holifield

My aunt, Annie B. Thompson, made the best butter roll, I have ever tasted in my life. A traditional Southern dessert, her recipe called for the combination of butter, whole milk and nutmeg, that literally melted in your mouth on the very first bite!

The butter roll is also one of those lost and nearly-lost recipes of days gone by, especially in a Southern Kitchen . My Aunt Annie , who learned to cook from her mother, My Grand, never wrote down any of our family’s most cherished recipes. They were passed down in the oral tradition and by just simply being in the kitchen at the right time of day and the instructions for the recipe were passed from cook to cook by showing them along with instructions like “you take a handful of this and little bit of that”, and everything would be perfectly prepared and just as delicious every time the dish was served at the dinner table.

Even though I never got the family recipe, I did stumble upon a recipe by Stan Gibson, of the University Club in Memphis , Tennessee, and his biscuit base butter roll recipe comes very close to Aunt Annie B’ s butter roll. However, Gibson elevated the simple ingredients of the dessert by substituting cream and half-and-half for the traditional whole milk, and drizzling crème anglaise over the soaking liquid that saturates the cooked dough and serving it with champagne grapes and figs.

In making Gibson’s recipe for an elegant butter roll, I feel as is I was able to rescue just a tiny bit of my family’s food legacy! This recipe was rich and sinfully delicious!